


The Gods Only Know

by Jenn_Harper



Series: Thread Upon Thread [2]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Historical RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Parenthood, Polyamorous relationship, Romance, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 07:00:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28347294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenn_Harper/pseuds/Jenn_Harper
Summary: Ubba survived the battle on the Afon River, and lives now in Ravensthorpe at the side of Eivor Wolfkissed, the man he loves.Their happiness is only marred by one thing that seems impossible - their desire to have sons.This is a continuation of Snatched Moments, though you don't need to have read that to read this; it does stand alone except for a few inconsequential details and an OC who plays a bit part.I hope you enjoy it, and as always, feedback is welcome :)Jenn/Harper.
Relationships: Eivor/Ubba Ragnarsson, Eivor/Ubba Ragnarsson/Sunniva
Series: Thread Upon Thread [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2075946
Comments: 8
Kudos: 34





	1. Ice

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note:  
> Sometimes you choose a story. Sometimes it chooses you. I did not plan to write any more about this ship, certainly not this particular story; but the mind will go where the mind will go, and here we are.
> 
> Many thanks as always to Myriath. You know all the reasons why you're a gem ❤

_Ubba was struggling through the snow; dark pines punctuated a fat white moon above, which did nothing to dispel the darkness; the sky was illogically clear despite the freezing wind which blew sleet into his face. He struggled forward, desperate not to fall, not to fall behind, the panicked feeling of being too small to keep going, growing with each passing moment... Ahead of him, in the darkness of the woods, the trees groaning and creaking in the wind, he could hear his mother, her sweet voice singing, calling him, the tune carried back to him, breaking his heart… He tried to call out…_

He woke himself with a strangled sound emerging from his own throat. His heart was racing, sweat on his skin, a clenching sadness in his chest. Blindly, he reached for Eivor where he slept at his side, pulled him closer, buried his face in his hair, seeking his warmth, his presence, the comfort of reality.  
Eivor half woke, mumbled something and shifted back more snugly against him, fitting neatly into the curve of Ubba’s body.  
For a moment, the dream remained; his mother’s sweet tune lingered, a song he half remembered, that she had sung to him as a boy, fading even as he tried to grasp it, as it slipped away into silence. He breathed deeply, trying to calm himself, but the ache of it remained, the heaviness in his chest.  
He couldn’t stop himself trying to remember her face, lost so long before, when he was in his fifth winter… but the more he grasped after the memory, the more her features shifted somehow, refusing to become clear, like looking at her face through the distortions of glass.  
So little remained to him of her. A small white shell she’d given him, worn smooth by the tide, speckled with brown like a hens egg; the memory of a leaden grey sea she walked beside, her back to him, a brightly coloured dress whipping in the wind, yellow and orange and red. Her bone comb, yellowed with age, engraved with horses with nostrils flaring; he remembered combing her hair with it, his clumsy, child’s fingers as gentle as he could make them amongst her dark, almost black, hair; and the silver ring she’d always worn on a cord about her neck, a gift from her father, which he remembered flashing in the light of a tiny lamp in a dark room - though that no longer lay with the other items beside the bed, but had found where it belonged, on Eivor’s finger.  
These few keepsakes, and nothing more, which he had been forced to hide when he was a boy, away from the contemptuous eyes of his half-brothers. They lay now in a small box beside the bed, alongside other trinkets from other times, from other people he had loved and lost.  
The thought made him hold Eivor tightly, eternally grateful for the fate that had brought him to this place, and Eivor into his arms. His breathing slowly eased back to normal, the feeling left behind by the nightmare slowly fading as he at last slipped back into sleep.

They were at the raider’s barracks during the few short hours of the following day, negotiating with the new Jomsviking that had been recruited. He had a good reputation but had proven to be a troublemaker. Eivor had gathered the raiders together and listened to their complaints patiently. He’d issued some mild punishment where it was due, then he had a keg of mead breached so that they could drink in a spirit of reconciliation which, Eivor observed as he and Ubba walked up the hill towards the longhouse afterwards, would probably only last out the day, if they were lucky.  
Ubba smiled absently, but didn’t reply. As they went into the longhouse, he followed Eivor into their room where he watched Eivor foraging in the chest for something as he propped himself against the table. He looked out the doorway into the deserted hall as he said quietly, ‘I dreamt about my mother last night, for the first time since I was a boy.’  
Eivor looked up at him in surprise - at the topic, more than the content of what he was saying. Ubba rarely talked about the past, and besides the drunken night the two of them had spent together in Quatford years earlier, he’d never mentioned his mother. Eivor thought that perhaps he didn’t even know he’d mentioned her then.  
He asked gently, ‘What was the dream?’  
Ubba kicked at the floor, looking down at the spot as he did. ‘It was half a dream, half a memory.’ Then he looked over at Eivor, frowning lightly. He felt nervous speaking on this subject, irrationally expecting him to react as Ivarr would have done, with dismissiveness or faint disgust. ‘Did I ever tell you I didn’t know my father until my fifth winter?’  
Eivor shook his head lightly, a slight frown of concern on his brow as he came to stand in front of him.  
Ubba reached out a hand to briefly caress Eivor’s cheek, seeing only love in the other man’s face; then he allowed it to drop back at his side as he said, ‘She was sick; had been all winter. In the night, she sent me to the longhouse - to get help, I suppose. I don’t remember now. It was a long walk, a frozen eternity, as though I was in Niflheim itself…’ He trailed off and sighed, looking down at the floor again as he mumbled, ‘In the dream I am there again, a boy lost in the cold and the dark. She sings, calls me to her, but I can never reach her.’  
Eivor’s heart throbbed in sympathy. He rested a hand on his arm comfortingly. ‘I am sorry, Ubba. Perhaps you should speak to Valka. Dreams are omens. She may be able to help make sense of what you have seen.’  
Ubba nodded slowly, but said nothing. He had no words for what he felt - a mixture of love, tenderness, sadness, loss. Instead, he took Eivor into his arms, hoping that the embrace might express some part of all that he couldn’t say. 

Ubba went to visit the seer in the early morning, his breath coming out in puffs of steam, his cloak pulled tightly around him. The distance from the main hub of the settlement always made Valka’s hut feel sequestered, but the thick layer of snow that had fallen during the night only added to the feeling.  
He entered through the rattling bone charms, and Valka looked up from whatever she was brewing.  
‘Ubba Ragnarsson,’ she said. ‘What brings you here?’  
Now that he had come, he was uncertain how to begin. He shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, but at last settled on saying, ‘A dream. One that I have not had since I was a child. I wonder why it has come back to me now.’  
‘Ah,’ she said quietly, placing her pestle aside and coming to meet him. ‘Please – sit. I will listen.’  
He sat on a chair on one side of the hut, and she pulled up a stool opposite him. She smiled reassuringly, and he began to tell her about the dream, and the memories it was drawn from. He spoke haltingly at first, then with more certainty, until he had told her far more than he’d told Eivor, and much more than he had intended.  
When he fell silent, Valka looked thoughtful for a long moment. ‘You say that you remember feeling a warm sense of safety with her, though it was long ago; and you said that you have only begun to feel that again now, with Eivor?’  
He wished he had not said so – he could almost feel Ivarr’s sneer from Valhalla - but it was the truth. He nodded once, tersely.  
‘Then perhaps this dream is only your fears taking form. You loved your mother and she was lost; and now you love Eivor, you are afraid he too will be taken from you by fate.’  
Ubba considered that, staring out the door. He did not like it being suggested that he was afraid, but, in truth, he thought she may be right; though something told him there was more in it than that.  
Quietly, chin in one hand, Valka continued, ‘There is something else that the gods suggest to me.’ She hesitated a moment, choosing her words. ‘You were a child again in the dream, a state you are pulled towards as you seek for her… a state you can enter now only as a spectator, through children of your own.’  
Ubba closed his eyes for a long moment. The first words that sprung to his lips were denial – but he was aware of a long-quieted feeling in his heart, something he had closed away only with great effort long years before... The realisation made him feel a little sick. He stood, looked at her unseeing for a moment, then said softly, ‘It is not my fate. I am lucky to be alive. I dare not ask any more of the gods.’  
She smiled gently. ‘The Nornir wove your fate, Ubba Ragnarsson. If a son is to be born to you, it will come to pass.’  
He thanked her, though he left the hut more cast down than he had entered it.

That evening in the longhouse, while Ubba sat brooding over a mug of spiced mead, Eivor had fallen into conversation with Sunniva, one of the female raiders of the Raven clan, who had become a friend to both of them since the Yuletide festival: she’d joined them on hunting expeditions, and proven an excellent markswoman; had beaten them both at orlog and at the archery competition; and she could drink as well as either of them. During the festival, she and Ubba had laughed until their sides ached at just how drunk Eivor had made himself, and she’d helped Ubba drag Eivor back to bed more than once.  
Through all the joking and teasing, an intimacy had begun to develop between them, though it was still early; they were still a little watchful of one another.  
Eivor stood. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’ He rested a hand on Ubba’s shoulder as he passed, and Ubba looked up at him with a warm, loving smile before turning his attention to Sunniva.  
‘Did I see you returning from Valka’s hut this afternoon?’ she asked.  
‘You did.’  
‘Nothing serious, I hope?’  
‘No,’ he said, feeling self-conscious. He hadn’t even mentioned the visit to Eivor yet, because he wasn’t sure how to approach the subject; so, before he could come back, he steered the conversation onto the first alternative topic that came into his head. ‘You will go raiding again this summer?’  
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I could no more give up the thrill of following my jarl on raids than you could give up my jarl.’ She grinned at him cheekily.  
Ubba smiled his lop-sided smile. For a moment he considered her before he asked, ‘I’ve often wondered, do you have anyone to keep you warm at night?’  
Eivor came back just as he asked this. He said to Sunniva, who was chuckling to herself at the brazenness of his question, ‘What did I say about this particular Dane and his blunt tongue?’  
Ubba said defensively, ‘If I didn’t ask, I’d never know. The only gossip I hear is what Vegh tells me, and he’s only good for which horses in the stable are fastest, or who slept in the bushes after taking too much ale.’  
Both Sunniva and Eivor laughed before Eivor said, ‘Vegh is a boy of simple interests.’  
Ubba slowly shook his head, a rueful smile on his face. ‘He is. But we stray from the point. You see I am blunt for good cause. If you had a lover, Sunniva, I would be the last to know if I did not ask.’  
Sunniva said with a grin, ‘No man is bold enough to take me, Ubba Ragnarsson. Any who has tried in the past soon felt himself affronted when I bested him at everything.’ She looked him in the eye as she said this, as if challenging him to say otherwise.  
Ubba didn’t have to say it; provokingly he just raised one eyebrow and smiled as though he did not know this to be true from bitter experience during the Yule festival.  
She narrowed her eyes slightly, and was about to speak when Randvi called to her. She acknowledged the call, but before she went away, she said to Ubba, ‘One day, Ubba, I will prove it to you.’  
He said laconically, ‘I look forward to it.’  
When she was gone, Eivor, who had chuckled throughout this exchange, said, ‘You’re going to regret that challenge, Ubba.’  
Ubba just grinned in reply and drank his mead.


	2. Water

‘Where’s Ubba?’ Eivor asked Sunniva as he passed out into the hall during a bright, warm day in early spring.  
She looked up from the pot of stew she was preparing for lunch and said in an offhand way, ‘He said he was going to wash at the waterfall, and asked that I tell you the further waterfall. He also said I should give you a wink to go with it,’ she added, smiling.  
Eivor grinned, and playfully said, ‘You can come along if you like.’ The words were out before he could think about them, and he flushed slightly, but he didn’t regret saying them.  
She laughed, though there was a definite something in her eyes as she said, ‘I have problems enough without you two involving me in your mischief.’  
Eivor chuckled and went outside, then cut through the woods towards the waterfall he knew Ubba had meant. He found that he was humming happily to himself. There could be no denying that things between the three of them – he, Ubba and Sunniva - had reached a very playful, flirtatious place which they all treated as nothing serious, but Eivor at least had begun to feel there was an escalating intent behind it all. He would never have thought about it had Ubba not been just as bad, but he had begun to think that perhaps there was something there that they should talk about.

Ubba was under the waterfall rinsing soap from his hair, his back turned to the path, and for a long moment Eivor paused to admire his figure; his strong thighs, the narrow waist, the broad shoulders... then his eyes were drawn to the two new and still angrily red scars at either shoulder, a reminder of just how close to death the big man had been.  
Eivor called out to him then, and Ubba grinned when he saw it was him.  
‘Good morning, Wolfkissed.’ There was a warmth in his look that made Eivor’s stomach flutter. It didn’t matter how long they were together, he thought, there was always this feeling of desire, of love, but also the recurrent surprise, and even gratitude, that Ubba was his - that the moments snatched from fate had not all been a dream, that he was still alive.  
Ubba saw these thoughts cross his face, and grinned more widely. ‘Come here. You could do with a wash yourself.’  
Eivor grinned back, and said with intent, ‘Ubba Ragnarsson. If I come over there, it will not be to wash.’  
Ubba said more coaxingly, ‘All the more reason to come here.’  
Eivor grinned and slipped out of his clothing except his undergarments before picking his way to where Ubba stood, watching his approach with the familiar heat in his eyes, the desire ever ready to flare between them.  
Eivor ducked under the waterfalls flow for a moment, running his hands across his face and gasping slightly. Then he turned to Ubba, a wicked glint in his eye. Ubba chuckled, and pulled him against himself, kissing him deeply, their bodies pressed together with swiftly rising passion.  
‘A man can’t even walk in the woods without stumbling on you two near ploughing.’  
Sigurd’s voice. Ubba and Eivor stopped what they were doing, though Ubba did not immediately release Eivor from his embrace. Instead, Eivor casually glanced over his shoulder at his brother.  
‘Your timing is impeccable as always, Sigurd.’  
‘I was looking for you,’ Sigurd said, showing no signs of remorse, or of leaving them in peace.  
Ubba closed his eyes in irritation for a moment, resting his forehead against Eivor’s. He mumbled, ‘Can I strangle him now?’  
Eivor looked up at him then, his eyes dancing with mischief. ‘I won’t stop you.’ He gave him a last lingering kiss.  
Ubba rumbled in his throat and said, ‘Meet me back at the longhouse when you’re clean.’ Then he stepped away, out of the water, and went to dry himself, raising an eyebrow at Sigurd as he caught up his tunic.  
Eivor remained at the waterfall a while longer, using the soap and rinsing off. ‘You said you were looking for me, brother?’  
‘I was.’ Sigurd looked at Ubba meaningfully, but Ubba was already leaving and didn’t notice the look.  
Eivor did. He frowned, and as soon as Ubba was out of earshot, he said, ‘Whatever you have to say to me, you can say before Ubba. I will repeat everything to him later.’  
Sigurd shrugged. Things had been better since their return from Norway the year before, when Eivor was made jarl, but he was still difficult to reach sometimes. His mind often drifted to some other place beyond the world - a place that only Eivor could understand, though understanding didn’t make things any easier.  
‘Randvi told me you’re intending to go to Jorvik with him?’ Sigurd asked, ignoring what Eivor had said.  
Having finished washing, Eivor went to collect his clothes, shaking the water off himself. ‘Yes,’ he replied curtly. He hated the way Sigurd spoke as though he didn’t yet grasp that he and Ubba functioned as a unit now – speaking as though it was Ubba who had decided to go to Jorvik, and he was just tagging along, rather than it having been a plan they’d made together. It was a subtle failing, one that at first, had not bothered Eivor at all; but had become increasingly irritating as time went on. It was an indication of Sigurd’s attitude to Ubba’s having joined the clan: equal parts acceptance and wariness. What he thought Ubba’s intentions were, Eivor couldn’t say, as Sigurd had refused all attempts to be drawn on the subject; but he was clearly doubtful of the relationship in some way.  
‘When do you intend to return?’  
‘Before midsummer,’ Eivor said, turning back towards Ravensthorpe, not waiting for Sigurd, but letting him hurry to keep up. ‘Why?’  
Sigurd avoided the question. ‘Just as long as you return before autumn.’  
Eivor patiently asked again, ‘Why?’  
‘Randvi is expecting,’ he said.  
Eivor looked at him with happy surprise. ‘You’re to be a father?’  
Sigurd was still frowning, but he allowed a slight smile to creep into his features. ‘I am.’  
Eivor embraced him, though Sigurd remained rigid, something lurking in his face that Eivor didn’t notice. They continued on towards the village. ‘Which brings me to the point.’ Sigurd said. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you: Does it bother you?’  
‘Does what bother me?’ Eivor asked, still smiling happily, anticipating going straight to Randvi with his congratulations. He was truly happy for Sigurd and Randvi, who has separated then found their way back to one another again; and he was excited to have a niece or nephew – the first of many, he hoped.  
‘That you’ll never have a son of your own.’  
Eivor stopped in his tracks and turned, his smile evaporating. With a warning in his voice, he said, ‘Sigurd...’  
His tone just glanced off him, and he continued, ‘You’re the jarl now, Eivor. There must be a son to take your place when you grow old and weary. And what about Ubba? Surely he wishes for someone to continue the sagas of his forefathers.’ He paused, before adding, ‘I remember when you used to speak of finding the right woman, of the children that would fill the longhouse. That was your dream. You cannot have forgotten it.’  
Eivor took a long careful breath. ‘Even if I once did think of it,’ he said quietly, ‘that is not the fate the Nornir have woven for me.’  
Sigurd shook his head. ‘Destiny can be changed Eivor – you know that more than anyone.’  
Eivor gritted his teeth. Sigurd’s look of bland enquiry as he waited for Eivor to answer him was almost intolerable; as if they were discussing nothing more than the colour of the sky. He was oblivious to the insensitivity of his question, and Eivor had to resist the urge to punch him in the face, as he had done once before. Without another word, Eivor turned into the longhouse, leaving Sigurd looking surprised that he hadn’t answered.

In their room, Ubba had undressed and stretched out on the bed to wait for him, but had fallen asleep. Eivor threw off his wet tunic and undergarments, and then crawled in beside him. He roused Ubba from sleep by straddling him, caressing one of his scarred cheeks and showering kisses on his face, his neck, the broad span of his collarbones.  
Ubba rumbled in his chest, and opened his eyes, those beautiful green eyes which always made Eivor ache with love, were full of heated wanting. His voice was husky as he said, ‘Here you are.’  
Eivor held Ubba’s molten gaze as he tangled his fingers in his loose, still damp hair, kissing him lingeringly, teasingly on the lips. Using his other hand, he traced a line from neck to shoulder, tenderly lingering in the hollow at the base of Ubba’s neck.  
Ubba shivered with pleasure, skin prickling with desire as he caressed the back of Eivor’s head with one broad, calloused hand; his kisses growing more insistent, more demanding as, with his other hand spanning Eivor’s lower back, they ground their hips together; a deep groan escaping Ubba even as Eivor mumbled incoherent, heated words against his mouth.  
Then gasping, the arching of Eivor’s spine beneath his hand, Ubba let everything go, a guttural duet of release between them.  


Afterwards, slick with sweat, Eivor rested his forehead against the swiftly rising and falling expanse of Ubba’s chest, his own breathing ragged,his whole body abuzz, vividly alive with pleasure.  
Ubba was running a hand across his back absently, and when Eivor looked up, his eyes were closed, a soft smile on his lips. There were no words for the love he felt towards him. He would do anything to give Ubba whatever he wanted… but that thought made him pause, Sigurd’s questions rising up like dead things from the bottom of a pond. He frowned. What if what Ubba wanted was children?  
Ubba half opened his eyes, and looked down at Eivor’s face with a sleepy, loving smile. He saw the frown, and tilted his head a little.  
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked gently, an eyebrow raised. ‘Was I too rough?’  
Eivor hastily said, ‘No,’ then paused, uncertain what to say. He closed his eyes, resting his forehead against Ubba’s chest for another moment before rolling off him, and sitting up on the edge of the bed, his back to him.  
Ubba propped his head up on his elbow, a frown creasing his own brow. ‘What is it, Wolfkissed? There are words that want to be spoken.’  
He saw Eivor tense slightly, though his face was hidden; for a moment he still said nothing, but then, looking back over his shoulder, meeting Ubba’s questioning look, he admitted, ‘I fear to speak them.’  
Ubba felt unspeakably tender towards him in that moment. Sometimes he wondered at this capacity in himself to want to protect Eivor from everything. Gently but firmly, he said, ‘Whatever it is, speak it plainly.’  
Eivor took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled. He turned then to face Ubba as he said, ‘Ivarr once told me that you longed for sons. Is that still what you want?’  
Ubba sighed. Valka’s words were loud in his ears, and the same denial he had felt in her hut urged to be spoken, but again he refused it. ‘Yes – my heart yearns for children.'  
Eivor sighed as the reality of this admission swept over him. He shifted back so that he sat with his back propped against the bed head, his head tilted against the carved wood. There was relief in knowing the truth, but there was fear in admitting his own wishes as well, fear of what would come next. Would he wish to take a wife? Would he say it would be better if they both did that? It was a foolish fear of course, but he felt it anyway.  
He looked up then, meeting Ubba’s eyes. His mouth was dry. ‘The truth is, I too wish for sons.’  
Ubba felt something warm welling in his own chest to see how worried Eivor was by these words, as though he had stabbed Ubba and was waiting for him to storm from the room. He adjusted his position so that he could put an arm around Eivor’s shoulders, pulling him in close. Their eyes met as he said with feeling, ‘I would do nothing that might hurt you. My love is for you alone. Either we do this together, or not at all.’  
Eivor felt the reassurance of his words, the love that did not waver. His fears faded a little. He reached up, stroked Ubba’s cheek then kissed him gently. ‘I’ll always love you,’ he said gently. ‘Sons or no sons.’


	3. Heat

The midsummer festival was in full swing. Everyone was singing, talking, dancing, brawling; many were already very drunk, others were only beginning to enjoy the mead; but for all, it promised to be a joyous evening of fun and entertainment.  
Ubba and Eivor had been swimming in the river, and were stretched out lazily in the shade beneath a tree, hands behind heads, smiling happily. They’d drunk a few horns of ale, just enough to add to their sense of quiet contentment. Something about admitting that they both wished for children a few months earlier had created a new sense of ease between them, an openness that hadn’t been there before. Eivor had noticed that Ubba seemed more often to think about his own childhood, or at least had begun to share his thoughts more. For Ubba’s part, he had found himself on a journey into his own past, triggered by the dream of his mother, but unknowingly encouraged by Eivor’s ability to listen without judgement.  
A group of village children were playing hide and hunt nearby, squealing loudly when one of them was found. A woman, clearly drunk, shouted at them to take their noise somewhere else, and the children went, talking in low voices between themselves, glancing back at her.  
‘Plotting something,’ Eivor remarked, with a smile.  
Ubba smiled back. ‘She should hope there isn’t an Ivarr amongst them.’  
Eivor turned his head to look at him. ‘I can only imagine.’  
Ubba looked up at the tree canopy, and squinted against the sun, a shaft of light having found his eyes. A smile was playing about his lips. ‘We were always fighting. Not just Ivarr and I, but all of us.’  
Eivor already knew that Ubba had twelve half-brothers and -sisters. The eldest sons, much older than he, had almost always been away with Ragnar for long stretches of time, and when they were home, they were remote figures, adults with no time for a young child. Ubba really grew up with the five sons of Aslaug - his elder brothers, Ivarr, Halfdan and Bjorn, and Sigurd and Ragnvald, who were younger.  
Ubba continued, ‘Aslaug wore out her voice in shouting at us, to attend to our lessons - but it never did any good.’ He was still smiling as he added, ‘She was always trying to teach us to cook.’ He opened one eye and looked at Eivor. ‘Can you imagine Ivarr learning how to prepare meat for roasting?’  
Eivor laughed and shook his head. ‘I can only imagine him as a very difficult child.’  
‘Just as he was a difficult adult,’ he agreed wryly. ‘He often slipped out in the middle of the lessons. Once I recall, there were only the two of us…’ He frowned for a moment. ‘I suppose the others had the fever which often came in summer - it was a hot day, and I did not like to be sitting so close to the hearth. In any case, Ivarr heard dogs fighting in the yard, and slipped away to watch. Aslaug turned with a question for him, and found only me still listening.’  
‘You were interested in cooking?’ Eivor asked with a doubtful smile. ‘You have forgotten all that you learnt, then.’  
He snorted. He couldn’t deny it, but when he spoke again, there was a shadow of sadness in his voice. ‘I was not interested, I just wished to please her. It was foolish.’  
‘Because you were not her child?’  
He sighed. ‘I was born while she was married to Ragnar. She could not forgive me for it.’  
Eivor kissed him gently and changed the subject. ‘You were closest to Ivarr?’  
‘I was. When I was first taken into the family, I was overwhelmed by the noise, how boisterous they all were. I had been alone with my mother my whole life. I would have disappeared entirely if I could have, if Ivarr hadn’t pulled me out of my corner and thrust me forwards.’ He sighed as he sat up, reaching for his drink which rested nearby. When he had taken a long swallow, he continued, ‘I think he did it only to spite Aslaug at first. He hated her as much as he loved her. She pressured all of them to be greater than their grandfather, and Ivarr felt it the most, as the eldest. He defied her in a hundred small ways; by wasting his time, learning as little as he could, answering back.’  
Eivor said, ‘And yet, the skalds will sing of him.’  
Ubba almost shrugged. He looked out at the people swimming in the river. ‘Aslaug would be proud if she had lived to see it. Father,’ he shook his head a little, ‘That’s another story.’  
‘Eivor!’  
He sat up then, looking over his shoulder, shielding his eyes against the sun. He smiled warmly.  
‘Sunniva. Where have you been? I was looking for you earlier.’  
She smiled back. ‘I went with Tarben to fetch more flour for tomorrow’s bread.’  
Ubba grinned slyly. ‘I wonder he didn’t ask you to go with him, Eivor.’  
Sunniva said chidingly, ‘Ubba!’  
Eivor looked between the two of them in enquiry. ‘What do you mean? I’d have gone with him to collect the flour if he’d asked.’  
Sunniva said fondly, ‘Eivor Wolfkissed, you’re an oblivious fool. Anyway, Randvi said I was to fetch you to the longhouse. There’s a speech to be made, and everyone is waiting for you.’  
‘Can’t she make it herself?’ he said, though he was already on his feet, and held out a hand to Ubba, making it clear he wasn’t getting out of it either.  
‘She could,’ Ubba said as he batted his hand away and stood. ‘It would certainly be better than any you’ve given.’  
Eivor just shook his head solemnly and said to Sunniva. ‘You see what I have to put up with?’  
They had reached the longhouse as she said, ‘And what he has to put up with from you. You deserve each other.’  
Ubba chuckled, and Eivor was about to reply when Randvi swooped in to claim his attention. Sunniva took the moment to slip away, smiling happily.

Much later, when the sun was sinking and everyone was decidedly drunk, Eivor was arm wrestling Sunniva. Her air of concentration, as though the competition was of much more importance than it was, had Ubba chuckling quietly into his drinking horn.  
‘I can see why you chose to become a raider not a seer,’ he said to her. ‘Your combative qualities would have been wasted on dreams and potions.’  
She grinned up at him for a moment, losing her concentration, and Eivor seized the moment, and with an undignified whoop of triumph, he thumped Sunniva’s arm onto the table.  
She cursed him, though she was laughing. She jabbed a finger into Ubba’s belly and said, ‘That was your fault.’  
Ubba looked down at her and grinned. He was about to speak when Vegh appeared with more ale, filling all their horns, before disappearing again.  
‘Is it just me,’ Ubba said, looking after him with a frown, ‘Or is that boy trying to get us drunk?’  
Eivor smiled crookedly. ‘Successfully, I would say. I suppose he just wants to avoid a training session tomorrow. He knows you won’t do anything if you have an aching head.’  
Ubba snorted and said boldly, ‘I’ll be good for anything tomorrow.’  
Both Sunniva and Eivor laughed at that. Eivor said, ‘You’re not even any good for anything now!’  
He looked from one to the other slowly with his eyes slightly narrowed, his look making a suggestion that they both understood. At the best of times, Ubba was not subtle. He backed up this look with the demand, ‘Shall I prove it?’  
Eivor felt his heart racing; he glanced at Sunniva who was asking with a look what he thought.  
As they hesitated, Ubba flung his horn away in a very devil-may-care way, and placing both hands on the table, looming over them both, he said again, softly this time, ‘Shall I prove it to you both?’  
Eivor said softly to Sunniva, ‘If you’re willing?’  
She had flushed a little, but her eyes shone. ‘Gods, am I willing.’  
Eivor nodded, smiling gently. He took her by the hand, and they followed Ubba towards their bedroom as he said, sounding deliberately doubtful, ‘Alright, Ubba Ragnarsson. Let’s see you prove it.’

They freed themselves of their clothing, a kind of breathless laughter bubbling out of them as they did so; but the mood shifted swiftly to something heated and wanting… Eivor’s hands found Sunniva’s hips, kissing her across her shoulders and the back of her neck; at the same time Ubba took her face between his hands and kissed her repeatedly on the lips; lightly, tentatively. Eivor paused in his attention to her neck to murmur in her ear, ‘If you wish us to stop at any time, you need only say so.’  
‘No,’ she murmured against Ubba’s lips, feeling their arousal and her own pulse racing, her arms snaking around Ubba to bring him in closer even as she leant back into Eivor, tilting her head to allow him greater access to the tender places on her neck. ‘Please don’t stop.’  
Eivor met Ubba’s eye then, a message passing between them, and gently Ubba took Sunniva’s chin in his large, calloused hand, tilting her face up so he could look into her eyes. With gentle care in his voice, he said, ‘We are with you.’  
She understood his meaning, the invitation to be an equal here, in what was happening, in whatever there was between them. She said softly, ‘I understand, Ubba.’ Then she smiled at him archly, and said more boldly. ‘Now, would you please make good on your promises, or was Eivor right after all?’  
Eivor snickered, but Ubba growled low in his throat and steered them towards the bed.

The fire which had developed between them, kept carefully banked during innumerable flirtatious exchanges and nights of drunken revelry together, now became an inferno. With each touch, each sigh, each moan of pleasure, each small, caring hesitancy, their caution disappeared. Each embraced the moment with swift fading reservations, each opening up to each. Then hands caressed without shyness - the soft skin, the rounded curves, the ragged scars, the hardened muscular plains, the dampened hair: the play of soft against hard and hard against soft.  
Each took their pleasure but gave back in equal measure in a melee of lovemaking; hearts thundering, as they sought the dizzying heights of pleasure. Then, with an almost inhuman sound, the moment arrived. Overwhelmed by waves of pleasure, they tumbled together, drenched in sweat, in a tangle of limbs.  
Eivor gasped out, ‘Gods.’ He kissed the skin he could reach, the mid-section of the dragon tattoo which ran up Ubba’s back between his shoulder blades, then rested his forehead there as he recovered his breath.  
‘Gods,’ Sunniva echoed. She disengaged herself from Ubba and rolled onto her back, breathing raggedly, a hand across her eyes. She couldn’t stop a delirious chuckle spilling out of herself. ‘Ubba Ragnarsson, what have you done to me? I think I’ve gone blind.’  
An answering rumble of laughter in Ubba’s chest was followed by a satisfied smile on his face as he, too, rolled onto his back. For a moment he was quiet; then, as he surveyed them both, as though looking over a town he had just thoroughly sacked, he put his hands behind his head, and gave a satisfied sigh. ‘I warned you.'  
Sunniva and Eivor looked at each other, each grinning. Such insufferable arrogance must be answered. 

Eivor woke in the morning with an aching head and unhappy stomach. He was curled into one of Ubba’s shoulders. For a long moment he remained still, his eyes closed, smiling at the flood of memories that crossed his mind; a series of blurred moments; of soft skin, calloused hands, groans of pleasure, the salt taste of sweat, of warm wet mouths and gods, the bliss of it all.  
When he opened his eyes, he met Sunniva’s gaze where she lay, curled into Ubba’s other shoulder. She smiled, though it was more like a grimace, and Eivor could only grimace back in sympathy, before he shook free of Ubba’s arm, and stretched out, arms above his head, realising how much he ached.  
Ubba was woken by the movement. As he stirred a little, a groan escaped him as he moved his head. ‘I feel as though Thor himself gave me a beating last night.’  
Eivor rasped out, ‘You did that to yourself.’  
Ubba opened one eye, gave him a long look of mock disgust which didn’t quite hide his smile. ‘You know I made good, Wolfkissed.’ He then looked to Sunniva and said as solemnly as he could, ‘I hope I was not too much for you.’ The smile was still lurking about his face though, and she plainly saw it.  
She snorted, rolled aside and sat up, holding her head for a moment in her hands as she said, ‘You wish, Ubba Ragnarsson.’ She glanced over her shoulder, smothering a grin at the scowl he levelled at her.  
She shook her head and stood to pull on her tunic and pants. When she was finished, she said, ‘Don’t forget you’re expected at the festival grounds at midday, my jarl.’ She put particular emphasis on ‘my jarl’, which made Ubba suddenly laugh one of his rare, belly laughs.  
Eivor grimaced. A memory rose up, making him flush. He vaguely remembered, while the pair of them had been bent on making Ubba regret his arrogance, he had jokingly insisted he should call him that. He closed his eyes in a grimace as he said. ‘I won’t forget. Thank you.’  
With a parting grin at them both, she went out the doors.  
‘Vegh has a lot to answer for,’ Eivor mumbled as he rolled back into Ubba’s chest.  
Ubba said with a grin in his voice, ‘I’ll put him through a training session he won’t soon forget.’  
Eivor’s chuckle at that was interrupted by a knock at the door.  
‘Go away,’ Eivor called. ‘Not today.’  
Of course it was Sigurd. ‘Eivor, I must speak with you.’  
Eivor groaned and grumbled under his breath, ‘Some days I wish someone would punch that man in the cock.’  
Ubba chuckled. ‘No time like the present.’  
Eivor snorted, called out to Sigurd that he was coming, and reluctantly sat up. He paused long enough to kiss Ubba long and lovingly, then climbed from the bed to fetch his clothes. 

Sigurd eyed him as he came into the hall. ‘Did I just see Sunniva leaving your room?’  
Eivor raised an eyebrow. ‘Did you call me out here just to ask me that?’  
Sigurd ignored his exasperated tone and asked, ‘Does Ubba know?’  
The door to their room opened then, and Ubba came out looking very rough, his eyes puffy, his hair tangled. He eyed Sigurd, clearly having heard the question, and then with a warm smile for Eivor, said, ‘I’m going down to the river to wash.’  
Eivor smiled back, ‘I’ll follow you.’ When Ubba was gone, he asked Sigurd. ‘Does that answer your question?’  
Sigurd had raised both his brows in surprise, and blinked at Eivor a few times before he said, ‘It does.’  
Eivor said, ‘If you have no more questions, I’m off to the river. It’s already too hot.’  
Sigurd just shook his head, and turned away, leaving Eivor to go down to the river, grumbling to himself.


	4. Ale

Ubba woke in the cosy darkness of their bedroom. For a moment he kept his eyes closed, feeling totally relaxed, Eivor breathing deeply in his arms, the sleepy heaviness in his own body dissipating only slowly.  
After a long moment, he opened his eyes, and carefully, so as not to wake Eivor, he manoeuvred himself to the edge of the bed, rolling his feet onto the floor as he sat up. He had woken because he was thirsty; so, lighting a lamp, he stood, pulled on a tunic and went out into the hall in search of some ale.  
As he stepped out of their room, he saw that dawn had come. The crew would be setting out on a raid once it was light enough, Eivor intending to lead them, and some of the crew were already waiting impatiently for breakfast.  
Ubba saw Sigurd coming towards him from the direction of his and Randvi’s bedroom. Ubba saw him hesitate, and he thought he would turn around and go back the way he’d come, as he often did in preference to talking to him; but instead, he said, ‘Ubba Ragnarsson.’  
‘Sigurd Styrbjornsson,’ Ubba replied, his voice still raspy with sleep.  
Sigurd hesitated again, then said, ‘Randvi has suggested we might spend some time together today. It’s been a long time since we did so, and she wishes there to be peace between us.’  
Ubba asked gruffly, ‘Is there not peace between us already?’  
Sigurd raised an eyebrow. ‘In a manner of speaking, but I have things I wish to say to you.’  
Ubba, had he been more awake, might have said something more, but just wanting to get the drink already, he said, ‘Allow me to see Eivor away, then you can talk as long as you like.’  
Sigurd nodded once, curtly, and then went away out the door, saying, ‘I will be at the barracks.’

Ubba went to fetch the ale, grumbling to himself. The last time the two men had talked of anything more than the most superficial things had been in Ledercesterscire, years earlier now. Then, they’d met as equals, political equals at least. Now, Ubba wasn’t sure what Sigurd thought their relative positions were, but he suspected that he would not agree with him.  
Ubba took up a cup and stood at a barrel of ale, the beer flowing out slowly. His relationship with Sigurd had never been warm. Ubba had found him irritating from the first. He remembered one incident in particular, when Sigurd had lectured him on how a son of Ragnar should act. Ubba frowned at the memory. He’d wanted to demand of him what he thought he knew about that, but had held his tongue because the extra manpower the Raven clan could supply had been needed to storm Tamworth. The bad feeling had remained, though; so much so that he had thought that it must end with a breach between them. By the time Tamworth was taken, though, Ubba had fallen in love with Eivor, or certainly begun to, so any idea of cutting ties had been thrown aside.  
His cup full, he turned off the tap and took a long drink. During the time that Eivor and Ubba were developing their relationship, even after Ubba had begun spending his winters at Ravensthorpe, Sigurd had been in the hands of Fulke. By the time they’d rescued him in Suthsexe, and Eivor had brought him home, he was so withdrawn that they couldn’t be sure if he’d noticed that Ubba was even there.  
Ubba refilled the cup then, thinking to take some for Eivor, and sighed heavily. After Sigurd and Eivor had come back from Norway, Sigurd had finally acknowledged Ubba’s presence for the first time; but he remained cold. Ubba did admit to himself that Sigurd was cold to everyone though, not just him. There was no way to know if this behaviour was meant as offensive towards Ubba, or if it was simply Sigurd being Sigurd.  
The cup filled, he made his way back towards their bedroom. The difficult relationship had not been helped by Sigurd’s ambivalent reaction to his relationship with Eivor. He seemed irritated by it at times, and at other times he was simply watchful. Since Sunniva had begun joining them from time to time, he seemed more puzzled than anything. He looked at the three of them with bewilderment, which Ubba found equally funny and irritating. He wished he would just ask his questions instead of peering at them like they were a great curiosity.  
Pushing their bedroom door open, he found Eivor awake, rubbing his face with both hands. He looked up as he came in with a smile. ‘You’re up early.’  
Ubba held up the cup to indicate he’d been to fetch a drink, and offered it to him without speaking. Eivor shook his head, and Ubba said gruffly, ‘Sigurd said he wishes to spend time with me today.’  
‘He did?’  
He nodded, setting the cup down beside the bed and began rummaging through the trunk at the foot of the bed for a clean tunic as he said, ‘He said he wishes there to be peace between us.’  
‘You agreed?’  
He grunted. ‘I said there was already peace, but I am curious to know what he has to say to me.’  
Eivor climbed out of bed, and came to embrace him. ‘Thank you,’ he said, stretching up to kiss him. Ubba dropped the tunic he’d found so that he could wrap his arms around Eivor, their lips meeting warmly.  
Ubba mumbled, ‘I’d rather stay in here with you.’  
‘I sail with the sunrise, remember.’  
Ubba sighed a little regretfully, but released him and picked up the tunic once more. ‘You had better get dressed then,’ he said with a half-smile, ‘The sun’s already risen.’

Ubba went with Eivor down to the docks, and watched as he jumped aboard the ship. The raiders cheered as they pushed off. Eivor waved once to him, and then they were away.  
He’d watched them leave many times before, but each time was a fresh reminder that his life had changed. It’d been hard at first, but now he was almost glad he didn’t have to go - or he would have been, if it hadn’t been for the chat with Sigurd which was waiting for him.  
He sighed, and went to find him.

Sigurd was in the barracks as he had said he would be, but he led Ubba back to the longhouse to talk. They found only a few people there, the hall quiet as it always was when the raiding party had gone, so they were able to sit alone, talking privately.  
Ubba did not want to be the one who began, so he drank slowly and waited, and after a short while, Sigurd said, ‘I have questions.’  
‘Then ask them,’ he said, allowing his mouth to tilt in a smile. ‘I might even answer them.’  
Sigurd still hesitated a moment before he asked, ‘I have not heard how you came to plough my brother.’  
Ubba had been about to take a mouthful of ale, but he froze for a moment, their eyes meeting. He wondered if Sigurd meant to be offensive with his choice of words, but decided, against the grain, to give him the benefit of the doubt.  
Stiffly, he said, ‘It began in Repton.’ Ubba could see him wondering, and he added, ‘After you had gone with young Ceolbert.’  
He blinked. ‘I know I said he should stay a few days to strengthen our friendships after I left, but that’s not what I meant.’ He paused a moment, frowning, then asked, ‘Who started it?’  
That was a question, Ubba thought, looking into his drink, considering an answer.  
It had really begun with Eivor’s poetry: impromptu, spoken with passion. Perhaps he should say that Eivor had started it... he'd turned Ubba’s head, anyway.  
But… then there had been the night when they had camped together, before Tamworth. He’d found his eyes drawn to Eivor like bees to flowers. He remembered how handsome he had been in the moonlight - perfect even. Perhaps he’d started it then - though that could not be so, because their eyes had met and lingered… something unspoken shared - as though they were both tentatively asking the same question, hoping for the same answer. He’d known then that his grand claims that they would weave a saga together was not just an overblown statement, but something more personal, deeper; something he truly yearned for.  
But still... Knowing his own feelings hadn’t been everything. He’d felt his age, felt the impossibility of their situation; and perhaps it might have passed like dust on a breeze but for a moment during the battle of Repton.   
They’d been fighting side by side near the main gate, his blood up and senses heightened, when Eivor had given him a look of such molten heat, he’d felt like someone had reached into his chest - and elsewhere - and squeezed.  
He’d known then; known that his were not just idle dreams, that his own fire did not burn alone. So perhaps Eivor had started it… though it was him who’d gone to the skald’s cottage that night in Repton and knocked on the door, his heart in his mouth, desire burning like fire in his veins...   
He abruptly turned his mind from the memories that followed, feeling himself growing aroused. He knew that was not the start. He knew it had started at some time before that.   
He said simply. ‘Both of us.’  
‘And after Repton?’  
‘He was with Ivarr.’ A situation Ubba had not wanted, despite his having suggested it. He knew Ivarr’s jealousy, knew how much he would wish to win Eivor over, just to make trouble. He didn’t think Ivarr had known about the night he’d spent with Eivor in Repton. He’d been careful to keep it quiet, though his brother had a way of finding things out that he wished to hide. He added quietly, ‘Until Ivarr died.’  
Sigurd frowned. ‘I never understood how you could forgive Eivor for killing your brother.’  
He said sadly, ‘There was nothing to forgive. If you’d known Ivarr, you’d understand.’  
Sigurd was quiet for a moment, frowning into his ale. ‘Eivor left Repton the day after me. You didn’t have much time.’  
Ubba considered this question for a moment, conscious of where it must eventually lead. He wondered how much he should tell him. He was acutely aware that Eivor had neglected his duties elsewhere to spend two weeks with him in Ledercesterscire - two weeks which Sigurd spent in Fulke’s hands.  
‘Eivor came to Repton with news of a friends’ murder in Lunden.’ He met Sigurd’s gaze and held it as he added, ‘That’s when things became serious.’  
Sigurd looked away, and drank deeply. He narrowed his eyes slightly. ‘Which of you decided you should join the Raven clan?’  
‘I asked that he should be my consort, if that’s what you mean.’ He frowned then, and asked, ‘What do you really want to know, Sigurd? These questions aren’t telling you anything you couldn’t have asked Eivor. You must have a reason for asking.’  
Sigurd didn’t appear to hear him as he asked, ‘What did you think becoming his consort would do for the clan?’  
Ubba considered his answer for a long moment. He spoke carefully. ‘What good did your marriage to Randvi do for the clan?’  
‘She brought peace between us and our enemies.’  
‘And I brought an alliance with the Dane armies of the north.’  
‘Which Eivor has already agreed with your brother.’  
Ubba just stared at him, still waiting for the point to come. Sigurd continued, ‘Something Randvi has brought that you can’t is children.’  
Ubba muttered, ‘Now we’ve come to it.’  
‘You have to admit it’s true.’  
Ubba shook his head wryly, a bitter smile on his lips. ‘Do you want me to leave Ravensthorpe, Sigurd? Is that what you’re asking?’  
‘No...’ Sigurd began, but Ubba cut him off.  
‘What do you think will happen if I do? Eivor will wave goodbye to me and find himself a wife?’ He snorted. ‘You’re even crazier than I thought if you believe that.’  
‘I didn’t say that,’ Sigurd said, a frown on his brow, though his tone remained flat. ‘I’m asking if you’ve thought about children.’  
He shook his head, scowling. He wanted to walk away, but for Eivor’s sake, he gritted his teeth and said curtly, ‘Yes, we’ve thought about it.’  
‘What about Sunniva?’  
Ubba stared at him a moment, and Sigurd just looked back, unflustered. Ubba said, ‘Sunniva has come to our bed sometimes, always willing. That is all I am going to say about that.’  
Sigurd nodded; then, sensing that Ubba required a small respite, he stood and went to refill their cups, taking his time in coming back.

When he returned to the table, he looked thoughtful. They drank in silence for a short time before Sigurd said, ‘Everything happened when I was not present.’ He paused, looking into his cup.  
Ubba just looked at him warily, waiting for him to go on.  
After a moment, he continued, ‘When I returned to the village, I felt everything had changed. Time had carried on without me, and I no longer fitted into the world as I once had. It has been difficult to find that place once more.’ He looked at Ubba then. ‘Eivor and I used to talk about our sons growing up together. It was an idea we both treasured.’  
Ubba felt some of his resentment thaw. He could not help but pity him a little. ‘It is one he still holds. Of that you may be certain.’  
Sigurd looked away, out the door towards the village. ‘I know that now; but Eivor would not speak of it when I asked him.’  
Ubba looked at him wryly. ‘If your approach was the same as this, I am not surprised.’  
Sigurd said with a hint of a smile, ‘It is not only Danes who can be blunt.’  
Ubba snorted at that, and drank his ale. He was surprised to admit that he felt relieved. Perhaps they might be able to get along better than they had been after all.


	5. Iron

It was an overcast afternoon in late autumn. In Ravensthorpe, the leaves had all but finished falling, the earth covered in a swiftly browning blanket of gold, and frequent rain dripped from branch and eve.  
The clash of iron against iron drew Ubba from inside the longhouse to the training enclosure where Vegh was teaching three of the village children. While the younger man still practiced with him once a week, Ubba seldom watched him train the children anymore, chiefly because the exercise brought out the worst in Vegh.  
Ubba sighed. Ever since the battle on the Afon, Vegh had changed. He was impatient and quick to anger over the smallest things. It made him a terrible teacher. Why he persevered, Ubba did not know. It did not seem to give him any pleasure.  
‘By Thor, Vegh - lift your shield!’  
Vegh snapped around to look at Ubba, and with a huff of irritation, he resentfully threw the shield into the mud and declared, ‘Ubba! I’m not a boy anymore. I don’t need your advice right now!’  
Ubba said coolly, ‘By the way you were holding that shield, it seems that you do.’  
‘I could defeat you standing on my head,’ he declared angrily, waving the practice sword at him. ‘Shield or no shield.’  
Ubba considered this for a moment. In another life, he would have taken umbrage to the young man’s self-confidence and answered such a challenge with quiet brutality; but the injuries he’d sustained at the River Afon were such that it was probably true. It always hurt vaguely when he had to admit this fact to himself, even though he had, for the most part, accepted the limitations his injuries imposed.  
He said coolly, ‘I am not a Saxon, defending his home with nothing to lose. If you don’t train with that in mind - and train these children likewise - you should quit now.’  
Vegh was working himself into a true rage, his face growing very red. The children noticed and took their chance to slip away, though Vegh yelled after them to come back. When they only ran faster, he rounded on Ubba.  
‘Why do you have to shame me?’ he demanded as he threw the sword to the ground beside the shield with a wet splat, balling his hands into fists. ‘Those children look up to me! You made me look like a fool before them.’  
Ubba raised an eyebrow. He chose his words carefully. ‘The children should know that learning never ends; that lesson is as important as any other.’  
Vegh just glared at him for a moment and then stormed away, leaving the sword and shield where he had thrown them.  
Ubba sighed as he walked into the enclosure, leaning down to pick up the weapons and return them to the rack beneath the veranda of the longhouse.  
‘He took that well,’ Eivor said from where he was waiting, unnoticed. He’d come out of the longhouse in time to see Vegh’s ungraceful exit.  
Ubba glanced at him with a sigh. ‘He never did take direction well, but he’s getting worse.’  
Weapons racked, they went inside together, Ubba stretching his left arm with a grimace.  
Eivor asked with a light frown of concern, ‘Your shoulder again?’  
‘Always,’ Ubba said with a trace of irritation in his voice. ‘It aches to remind me of what I could never forget.’  
Eivor gave him a sympathetic look, but he said, ‘Were you as difficult to train as Vegh?’  
He considered that as they collected mugs of ale, and when they had sat, he said, ‘I don’t think so.’  
‘Considering how stubborn you are,’ Eivor said with a hint of affection in his voice, ‘I cannot imagine it being otherwise.’  
Ubba acknowledged the jab with a slight smile, but he said seriously, ‘Father was a hard trainer, much harder than me. He accepted only rage in training. If we showed signs of weakness, resistance to his lessons, he beat us ruthlessly, and again later before the whole village. He was not raising sons, he said, but drengir.’ He looked into his ale for a moment, and added, ‘I was beaten twice, and never again. Ivarr though,’ he shook his head grimly. ‘He seemed to enjoy it somehow. Refused to show any sign of repentance at all. Continued to be defiant.’  
Eivor shook his head, but offered no comment. He was not surprised.  
They were silent for a long moment. From where they were sitting, they could see into their bedroom. Gleaming in the lamplight were a row of weapons on the back wall, chief amongst them was Ubba’s axe. It had been lost on the banks of the Afon when Ubba had been close to death, before being found by Eivor and returned to its rightful owner in Jorvik. Those had been the darkest days, when Eivor had been certain Ubba was going to die. He gave a small shudder to remember them.  
He’d found Ubba more than once, standing in their room, looking up at it; his eyes were always drawn to it.  
Eivor asked quietly, ‘Do you miss it? The rush of battle? The blood and glory?’  
Ubba glanced at him with a slight smile, then looked back at the axe. ‘Sometimes,’ he said. He paused before adding, ‘I was thinking of the day my father gave me that axe, during my fourteenth summer.’  
‘You were tall enough already?’ The axe was taller than Eivor, and had been difficult to wield, despite all his experience, when he had used it to avenge what he had thought at the time was Ubba’s death.  
‘I had grown taller than all my brothers but Halfdan by then. I’d been training with father since I’d reached my seventh winter. I was confident.’ He smiled a little then. ‘More than I should have been.’  
‘That was the first year you went raiding?’  
‘It was. I’d been begging Father to take me. My head was full of Ivarr’s talk of the glory to be had.’ He took a drink, and said a little grimly, ‘I still looked up to him then.’  
Eivor considered that. ‘He once said you used to be just like him - wild, savage. He thought England had changed you.’  
Ubba frowned in thought. ‘I was like him in some ways; in others...’ he spread his hands, ‘I came to see what he was, and did not wish to be that. I tried to keep him grounded, but you know how unsuccessful I was.’  
Eivor nodded. He had seen it all too clearly: Ivarr’s darkness, the pleasure he took in the suffering of others - and in his own. Eivor acknowledged there was a place for that in war, but how could a man contain that when it was no longer necessary? The simple answer was, Ivarr didn’t.  
Ubba had continued to consider what Eivor had said, and when he spoke, he agreed, ‘I _was_ wild, I suppose.’ He looked at Eivor out of the corner of his eye. ‘Especially in the first years of raiding. I had to keep up with my brothers. I thought I had something to prove. I fought fiercely, as I had been taught: No trick too dirty, no force too excessive, nothing held back. Off the battlefield, we all drank and ploughed as we wished. We fought: each other and strangers; in fun, or with real intent.’  
Eivor could imagine it vividly, and not for the first time he thought how difficult it must be for Ubba and Halfdan to be the last of that unruly group in Midgard. All those brothers, now in Valhalla.  
When he spoke again though, Ubba was frowning. ‘Ivarr acted as he did because he knew Father hated him. Though he chose Ivarr to lead the armies after our eldest brothers went to Valhalla, he never forgave him for killing Dunyat.’  
When he didn't continue, Eivor prompted, ‘Dunyat?’  
Ubba regretted mentioning it, but he would not hold anything back from Eivor, and so reluctantly, as though the words were drawn out of him, continued, ‘He was our brother. Father never admitted it but we all knew it to be true. Ivarr killed him behind the stables when Dunyat was fifteen winters.’ He squinted into his ale as though the admission hurt to speak aloud. ‘I was there. I…’ he paused and considered his words for a moment. ‘I wish I had not been. I did nothing to stop him.’  
Eivor rested a hand on Ubba’s arm, and he placed his own hand over it in response. The small gesture was somehow comforting.  
Eivor was struck with the thought that Ubba being the person Ubba was - still able to be soft and loving, despite everything - was little short of a miracle, as the Christians would say.  
‘How...?’ he muttered, realising he was speaking aloud and abruptly closing his mouth.  
‘How what?’ Ubba asked.  
Eivor flushed a little. ‘How is it that you… how did you come to be as you are?’  
Ubba smiled and asked playfully, ‘How am I?’  
Eivor grinned. ‘I’m offering no compliments, Ubba Ragnarsson. You know what I mean to say.’  
He nudged Eivor with his shoulder as they warmly smiled at each other, then looked thoughtful as he said, ‘Father always talked of it; that one day he would cease raiding and grow old beside the hearth-fire.’ The lop-sided smile appeared as he added, ‘No one ever believed him, but it was his talk that made me realise that I wanted a future that was more than just the tang of iron.’ He stretched his back then, and let out a great exhalation of air before he said, ‘But as I have told you before, Wolfkissed, I never really thought it would happen.’  
Eivor was about to say something to that when Sunniva entered the longhouse and called out to them. She greeted them both warmly and kissed them with comfortable intimacy; yet somehow, even then, it was clear that she was entirely respectful of their relationship, though she did not shy away from her place with them.  
She said firmly, with a smile, ‘I have good news. A new life stirs in my womb.’  
For a moment they only looked at her, the truth taking a moment to strike them; then came the joy, overwhelming them both so that they grinned and embraced her, then embraced each other.  
‘When?’ Ubba asked.  
‘Valka says in spring.’  
Eivor, his arm loosely around Ubba’s waist, proclaimed, ‘With the coming of the flowers, and the lambs gambolling on the green hillsides, the son of Eivor Wolfkissed shall cry his first...’  
Ubba looked down at him and shook his head, a smile on his lips. He seldom spoke poetry, but he proclaimed, ‘...The son of Ubba Ragnarsson shall cry his first, lusty breaths to shake the world.’  
Eivor laughed, happiness bubbling out of him. ‘I don’t care, Ubba Ragnarsson. Our son shall be born, and that is all I wish for.’  
Sunniva just shook her head at both of them, grinning. ‘I hope it is a daughter, and she shall be all mine.’

Eivor called the whole village to the longhouse to make the announcement, and everyone cheered with goodwill. A feast began, and swiftly descended into joyous riot.  
Only Sigurd remained aloof from it, as he always did. He took the first opportunity to ask Eivor, ‘Which of you is the father?’  
‘We both are,’ Eivor said, grinning.  
Sigurd blinked at that. ‘That just means you can’t say, I suppose.’  
‘Does it matter?’ Eivor asked, slightly impatiently.  
Sigurd didn’t reply to that. He seemed to consider it for a moment though. ‘Will she be moving into the longhouse?’  
Eivor shook his head, mostly at Sigurd’s asking such questions. ‘No. She wishes to retain her place at the barracks, to remain a raider. Once the child is weaned, we’ll share the responsibility of raising it.’  
‘You’re happy?’ Sigurd asked.  
Eivor laughed. ‘Why wouldn't I be?’  
Sigurd looked into his cup of ale thoughtfully, then gave a long sigh. ‘Eivor,’ he said. ‘I can’t pretend I understand the choices you have made. I wish to say to you that although I have been dismissive, perhaps even difficult...’ He glanced at him, then away. ‘I am glad that you’re happy.’  
Eivor smiled, and rested a grateful hand on his arm. ‘Thank you, brother. That means much to me. Our sons will play together and learn to fight together, just as we used to say.’  
Sigurd smiled then, as he so rarely did.  
They didn’t say anything further then, but for the first time in a long time, Eivor felt that his brother was really still there, somewhere inside the cool exterior he showed to the world. It was an additional happiness he could not have hoped for on what was already a deliriously joyous day.


	6. Air

Ubba and Eivor went together to visit Sunniva before dawn on a fresh day in mid-Spring. She had moved from the barracks to Valka’s hut in preparation for the coming of the baby. She and Valka had always been close, made more so during recent years as Sunniva studied herblore with her during the winter months and at other odd times when she was not off raiding with Eivor.  
Sunniva smiled warmly at them both, struggling to stand and batting Valka’s assistance away as she did.  
She eyed Eivor’s full armour and said, ‘My jarl. You’re going on another raiding party?’  
‘Yes – further west this time. By the time you are back with us, we will have a whole new river system to experience.’  
She smiled a little wistfully, though it passed as her hand strayed to her giant curve of stomach. She narrowed her eyes slightly, as though looking away into the distance. She looked to Eivor, and said, ‘Come here.’  
He stepped closer to her, and she took his hand, and rested it on the place where the baby was kicking incessantly. ‘You’ll be able to meet your child when you return this time, I think.’  
He looked into her eyes, smiling dreamily. ‘Really?’  
She nodded, smiling back gently. ‘It is close now.’  
He sighed, as he felt the fluttering of the kicks against his hand. ‘I am sorry I won’t be here… Perhaps I could stay…’  
She grinned then and shook her head. ‘No. One anxious father hanging around is enough.’ Ubba looked affronted, but before he could deny it, she went on confidentially, ‘When you’re away, he checks in about three hundred times a day.’  
Ubba flushed a little, but it was Eivor who said fondly, ‘He doesn’t realise we all see him worrying about things.’  
Ubba said defensively, ‘I don’t worry; I just try to prepare myself for any outcome.’  
‘Oh,’ Eivor said nodding at Sunniva with a wink, ‘Is that what you call it?’

When Eivor had sailed, Ubba walked slowly back towards the longhouse. The sun had brought with it a pleasant warmth, and he turned his face up to capture some of that warmth in his skin. He always felt oddly empty when Eivor was gone, as though all of the things that he had to do in day-to-day life lost any impetus for getting done. He often found the day he left was a wasted day, and he could already feel that today was going to be like that.  
So, he did what he had been secretly doing since he’d come back from Jorvik. Instead of returning to the longhouse as he might have, he went to the stable instead.  
He rode the bay to the rivers edge and then they swam across. Gaining the opposite bank, he let the mare pick her way up the hill. She knew the way well enough by now.  
It was beautiful day, the flowers blooming all around him, swathes of bluebells painting the dells in a rich purple-blue, while on the hilltop, as they breasted the rise,the grasses were thick, and such a bright green, it almost hurt to look at. His mare followed the path towards the lookout at the top of the hill.  
As he approached the wooden structure along the hilltop, the memories came flooding back as they always did. It was a place more meaningful to him than he had realised when he had first returned to Ravensthorpe.  
The lookout had been raised by his father and all of his brothers who’d come to England and the process of raising it had been as vexed with argument as anything they had ever attempted to do together.  
Ivarr had wanted no part in something so sentimental as a family activity. He’d said sarcastically that the Sons of Ragnar would not be remembered for raising a shitty wooden lookout post. Ragnar had lost his temper, of course, and roared at Ivarr with a violence that threatened to spill over into physical confrontation until Ivarr had scowlingly agreed to help. Bjorn, a man who had been genuinely the size of a bear and with a large personality to match had laughed until his sides ached at Ivarr’s resentment, which had resulted in a bout of fighting that night over too much ale. Bjorn had been thoroughly beaten; his nose broken.  
Ubba’s horse had come to a stop beneath the structure, and after a long moment looking up at the strong wooden beams, Ubba dismounted. For a moment, he paused, looking out over the land below, the curve of the longhouse roof just visible amongst the brightly green trees.  
He was growing nostalgic in recent years he realised, as he thought again of how he had been a younger man then, with firm ideas about how his life would be. He’d been so damn confident; but of course, he’d not foreseen anything that had followed. None of the deaths, especially not the terrible way in which his father had been killed; not the path that Ivarr had taken; and not that he would be here, very much alive, looking out on a world devoid of them all except Halfdan...  
He allowed his mind to follow this bleak path for only a moment though, and then he pushed the thoughts away, kicked off his boots, and began to climb the tower.   
For the length of time it took him to reach the top, he did not really think at all, his mind clear as he concentrated on placing his feet safely, and careful not to strain his shoulders. Some mobility had come back to them in the passing months with careful training, but he still didn’t know how far he could push himself, so caution was only sensible.  
At the top, the wind was strong. He gripped the uprights to steady himself for a moment, grinning. Eivor had asked him if he missed the rush of battle, and he had been careful to downplay it, but the truth was, he missed it like a man misses a fire in the winter. This was one of the few things he could do to grasp some sense of exhilaration, some heightened feeling of being alive. He could only drink so much, screw so much, argue so much - and still. Something had been missing.  
He’d watched Eivor jump from the top of the tower; had been horrified that he would take such a risk, though Eivor had only laughed and said Ubba should see some of the other jumps he’d taken.   
It had taken a few visits to the tower when Eivor had gone away on the first raid after he’d recovered before he realised what he really wanted was to emulate the jump himself. Just the thought of it had made his heart race like crazy.  
It had taken time for him to be able to climb the tower at all. Then it had taken longer again to make himself walk out to the end of the jutting leaping off point for the jump; but one day, he had just done it, falling like a stone but landing in the hay at the base with a heart that he thought was going to burst in his chest. Alive. Full of exhilaration.  
He walked out to the end then, ignoring the wind, ignoring the racing of his heart, the pounding of his blood in his ears. He thought off all that he had lost, all that he had gained… and he jumped.

It was an unseasonably wet windy night as the ship cut swiftly along the river. Eivor clung to the rear of the ship, face forwards, the wind cutting against his skin, bringing tears to his eyes.  
They’d been gone for a week – much longer than intended, but the pickings had been worth it.  
He’d spent those nights – mostly wet and cold, shrugged into his cloak – thinking of home. Of Ubba, of Sunniva, and the expected arrival of their child. There was something in these thoughts that was like a ray of sunlight in his heart on even the darkest and coldest of nights.  
The thought was interrupted by sight of the lights of Ravensthorpe as they rounded a bend in the winding Nene.  
‘Drop the sail!’ he called, and impatiently leapt down to help.

He reached the longhouse ahead of everyone else, and shoved the doors open, barely pausing to greet the guards who stood at the door.  
‘We weren’t expecting you back yet, my jarl, have you heard…’  
Eivor didn’t seem to have heard and rushed past, his thoughts only on Ubba and the baby that must surely have been born in his absence.  
Inside things were quiet, a scattering of people here and there. His eyes sought for Ubba, but found Sunniva instead, seated on one side of the hearth as she stared into the fire, a smile playing on her lips.  
‘Sunniva!’ he said, ‘You’re looking slim!’  
She stood when she saw it was him, and came to embrace him. She had a serious air about her that made him frown.  
‘Where’s Ubba? And the baby?’  
She gestured to the bedroom solemnly. ‘Daughter,’ she corrected. ‘They’re sleeping.’  
Eivor frowned. ‘Why so serious? Has something happened?’  
‘Go and see for yourself.’  
Feeling worried, he hurried to the room, pushing the double doors open as quietly as he could.  
Neither of them were, in fact, sleeping. Ubba had propped himself up against the headboard of the bed. He held his daughter cradled in his arms, the tiny pink fists waving in the air. He looked up when he heard the door open, and his smile was warm and loving when he saw that it was Eivor.  
Eivor, though, only saw the splint that held one of Ubba’s legs straight. ‘What happened?’ he demanded, gesturing at the leg.  
Ubba only glanced at it and said, ‘Oh – I broke it. It’s fine.’  
Eivor stared at him for a moment, a frown between his brows. ‘What do you mean you broke it? How?’  
Ubba shushed him, pointing at the little bundle in his arms. ‘Never mind how it happened. Your daughter wants to meet you.’  
Eivor said, ‘You haven’t got out of this,’ but he put the question aside for the moment, and went to sit beside Ubba on the bed. He turned his face upwards for Ubba to kiss him, allowing it to linger, and then he looked down at his daughter. She was a large baby, but in Ubba’s giant hands, she looked tiny.  
Ubba said contentedly, ‘She arrived a few days after you left. We’ve been calling her Norna, after my mother. If you don’t object, of course.’  
Eivor smiled softly. ‘The name is perfect.’  
Ubba nodded, looking down at her lovingly. ‘I thought I would care that she is not a son, but I find that I do not.’  
Norna had a shock of black hair, and her eyes, only just open, were blue-green. She was without a doubt Ubba’s daughter.  
‘She looks just like you,’ Eivor said with a grin, adding teasingly, ‘Poor girl.’  
‘She will be a great shield maiden one day,’ Ubba said, looking up at Eivor, a smile dancing around his eyes as he shifted her in his hands, holding her out for Eivor to take. ‘We will see to it.’  
As Eivor took her against himself, cradling her in his arms, he looked down at her little face, smiling. ‘She’s beautiful.’  
After a moment, she began to fret, and then the fretting became cries.  
Sunniva stuck her head into the room and said, ‘She’s hungry. I’ll take her to feed. I’ll bring her back in the morning as we agreed, Ubba.’

When she and Norna were gone, Eivor said to Ubba, ‘Now you can explain the leg.’  
Ubba looked cagey. ‘I broke it. Does it matter how?’  
Eivor raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you think?’  
He sighed and for a long moment, he was silent. At last he said, ‘I jumped off the lookout tower.’  
‘You what?!’  
He smiled slightly at his surprise. ‘I’ve done it many times before and not broken anything.’  
‘You… what? You have?’  
He nodded, looking bashfully down at the bedding. ‘It was just really windy the day that this happened. It’s not a bad break, I just landed wrong, on the less cushioning part of the haystack. Valka says it’ll be mended in no time. I was able to ride home.’  
Eivor just stared at him for a long moment. At length, he said, ‘You miss it, don’t you?’  
Not for the first time, he was glad that Eivor could read him so well so that he didn’t have to try to come up with the words to explain. He nodded, but said carefully, ‘Sometimes. There’s nothing else that comes near the rush…’  
‘Only jumping,’ he said, nodding slowly. ‘I will have to teach you the right way to do it. So this doesn’t happen.’ Then he sighed, asking gently, ‘Are you unhappy?’  
Ubba said, ‘Absolutely not; but perhaps…’ He trailed off, hesitating before saying more firmly, ‘I want to come with you on raids sometimes. I can still use a spear, and the bow.’   
Eivor was aware of how difficult it must be for Ubba to ask permission when he had been a king himself not so long before; he considered the request.   
There had been a time when he had thought Ubba was going to die; a time when he thought he would be permanently disabled; a time when he had not dared to hope that Ubba would ever be able to fight again, much less become a part of his raiding party; but now that the idea had been raised, he felt only excitement at the prospect of being able to raid with the man he loved.  
‘Of course,’ he said, with a small smile. We’d be glad to have you; though Sunniva will have to agree. One of us must be here for Norna.’  
Ubba smiled, thanked him, then kissed him tenderly.

Late that night, in the still darkness of their bedroom, Ubba laid awake listening to Eivor’s breathing, thinking of the future. He had always had simple dreams, and that had not changed. He wanted more children, sons perhaps; raiding parties along the river, areas he had never visited that he had only heard Eivor talk about; and of course their love, a glowing coal in the darkness of the world.  
He did not know when his end might come, but when it did, he would meet it willingly, knowing that he would leave behind some scrap of himself to remember that he had lived.   
Perhaps he might meet his end in battle after all, and might see his brothers and father again in Valhalla; but even if he did not, he did not mind.   
He was happy; and at that moment, that was what mattered most

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note:  
> Thanks for your patience with my getting this final chapter written and published. It’s been a long few weeks!  
> I appreciate all of you reading along and the kind comments and kudos. You guys are the best ❤️  
> Take care.  
> Jenn/Harper 😊


End file.
